It has finished downloading now, but I wont be playing it for another few hours. I'm kinda excited, but kinda not. ME3 was such a powerful experience and when I originally got to the final mission it was the culmination of hours experiencing that universe... but I haven't played ME3 in months so there has been no build-up to this moment. I'm currently listening to the ME3 soundtrack on Youtube in the hope that it will bring back memories of the game and put me in the right frame of mind for the ending. (I'm up to "A Future for the Krogan" right now. Damn, that was an amazing mission.)

For those who still think that this DLC was planned in advance and is part of a storytelling masterstroke by Bioware, the relative ambivalence I'm feeling right now pretty much proves how stupid such a plan would have been.

It has finished downloading now, but I wont be playing it for another few hours. I'm kinda excited, but kinda not. ME3 was such a powerful experience and when I originally got to the final mission it was the culmination of hours experiencing that universe... but I haven't played ME3 in months so there has been no build-up to this moment. I'm currently listening to the ME3 soundtrack on Youtube in the hope that it will bring back memories of the game and put me in the right frame of mind for the ending. (I'm up to "A Future for the Krogan" right now. Damn, that was an amazing mission.)

For those who still think that this DLC was planned in advance and is part of a storytelling masterstroke by Bioware, the relative ambivalence I'm feeling right now pretty much proves how stupid such a plan would have been.

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I've been replaying the game all week, so I've had about as good a build up as one can have (Just done Thessia and getting ready to do the Sanctuary mission.) Can't really articulate what my feelings are in regards to the extended cut, though ambivalence probably isn't too far off the mark. I don't think for a second that this is part of some master plan either; at least I hope it isn't because it's already backfired big time.

What gives me pause though is that the download is supposed to be close to 2GB and that's bigger then even LotSB. All I was expecting is some epilogue exposition similar to what we got in DA:O. At 2 gig that must be quite a fair amount of content, even if most of it is just permutations of the same basic material.

Disturbing thought of the day: what are the chances that they actually managed to make the ending worse?

So... wow. First, the actual new ending feels like such a "screw you" to the people who hated the endings in the first place. It's almost funny.
You want to refuse the star child? Well, there you go!

The actual "canon" endings though are... I don't know. Probably the biggest thing is that they completely retconned the destruction of the Relays in all the endings, so no more stranded fleets all across the universe. But otherwise, the endings are still basically the same with a different ending narration flavour text/voice over tacked on. Synthesis still doesn't make sense to me as an idea because of what it represents - forcing everyone to become a synthetic whether they want to or not.

They also don't explain how Shepard survives the Destroy ending at all... the "breath" is still the last thing you see before the credits if you pick that ending.

And funny enough, they fixed that idiotic Joker thing where he looks behind his shoulder as the Normandy is about to get caught up in the Citadel blast shockwave thing.

I don't want to say that it in any way fixes the ending and if anything, I feel it shows that they didn't know what they were going for in the original ending in the first place, but I have to imagine that at least a lot of the complaints have been addressed.

Once and for all, I'm glad to wash my hands of this franchise and to move on to better things.

I have seen the four endings for this game on YouTube. Like in the original endings, Bioware has opted for recycling cinematics for the older endings. There is new material for the Refuse and Synthesis ending. The Extended Cut includes under 10 minutes of footage. This material answered some questions (what is the skin color of the quarians?), but didn't answer other questions (could Joker and EDI have children?). And, in the case of the Synthesis and Control endings, a new question is posed, what becomes of the husks? For someone, like me who sold the game, does this cut propel me to go back to the store and buy the game? No.

What gives me pause though is that the download is supposed to be close to 2GB and that's bigger then even LotSB. All I was expecting is some epilogue exposition similar to what we got in DA:O. At 2 gig that must be quite a fair amount of content, even if most of it is just permutations of the same basic material.

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Based on the size and the fact that we've been told to play it from the Cerberus base mission to get all the content, what I'm expecting is a complete re-kajiggering of the cutscenes during the final missions so that they properly reflect actual decisions you've made throughout the trilogy and not just your EMS score. If we don't get that then I'll be somewhat disappointed.

Also, I've heard a rumour that there's an entirely new ending that's distinct from the three available in the original version, but I have no idea if it's true. Perhaps they did provide the option to tell the star child to go fuck himself, as so many of us desired?

The retcons are probably the biggest admission of fault that we're ever going to get from them. But the new ending is their way to stick it to the fans one last time. lol

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The retcon shows to me that they were not listening.

Most people were fine with the grimdark ending, just that there should have been different choices as well. So they remove the grimdark endings, and gives us the 'additional' choice which is essentially a FU to fans

The retcons are probably the biggest admission of fault that we're ever going to get from them. But the new ending is their way to stick it to the fans one last time. lol

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The retcon shows to me that they were not listening.

Most people were fine with the grimdark ending, just that there should have been different choices as well. So they remove the grimdark endings, and gives us the 'additional' choice which is essentially a FU to fans

Well done Bioware

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Well, it's more the fact that they made no sense as opposed to being grimdark.

^ Basically. Starchild's reasoning is plainly absurd, since the situation with the Geth indicates the Reapers themselves are the biggest cause of conflict between organics and synthetics. When you think of it that way he's launching this huge genocidal war as a bit of circular logic: "The New kid will always get beaten up by the bully, so I'm going to go and beat up the new kid so the bully won't have a chance to clobber him."

...we get the refuse/fuckyou ending and it's pretty clear that Starchild is just Harbinger trying to cut a deal with Shepard. This actually confirms my earlier theory about the nature of sacrifice/unification, in which case Harbinger HIMSELF is the one imposing this solution. In essence, the Cycle was always meant to be a temporary solution, not a solution to organics vs. synthetics, but a solution to Reapers vs. Everyone. Left to their own devices, the Reapers would just as soon pillage the entire galaxy and kill everything in it, but someone -- probably Harbinger -- redirected the Reapers to only focus on technologically advanced races while leaving the others alone.

When you consider that both the citadel and the mass relays were originally created by the reapers, and when you consider that the crucible is designed to use both of these as part of the solution, then you're forced to acknowledge the very strong possibility that the crucible is ALSO a reaper invention, probably created by Harbinger as a way to force an eventual end to the cycle. Harbinger couldn't build the Crucible himself, the other Reapers wouldn't have allowed it; he also can't USE the Crucible, since both the control pulse and the synthesis wave would probably fry his synthetic brain before he had a chance to finish the job. He needs someone who has not been indoctrinated and who otherwise wouldn't be destroyed by that radiation until it's had time to take effect -- an organic, in other words, and not just any organic would do, it would have to be someone with a ridiculously strong will and a unique enough understanding of the situation to make an informed choice. That also finally explains why shooting the power conduit triggers the (temporary, I'll bet) destruction of the Reapers: the Crucible was designed by Harbinger to primarily affect the Reapers, and blowing up that power conduit causes it to OVERLOAD them instead of control/pacify them. Harbinger seems to prefer the Synthesis solution; we already knew this about the Starchild, but now we can understand WHY: he doesn't want to destroy all organic life, but he doesn't want to destroy the Reapers either.

Circumstantial evidence for this one: when Harbinger descends to Earth to wipe out Hammer, he leaves Shepard alive with only a token force of troops to keep him away from the beam. Supposing that Harbinger knew what was going on in London -- and dropping out of orbit like that, he MUST have -- then it means he didn't go down there to keep Shepard from getting to the Citadel. He went down there to make sure the NOBODY ELSE did. And the Illusive Man, whether he knew it or not, was tasked with the sole job of making sure nobody but Shepard could make it to the Crucible to make that crucial choice. Thus the Illusive Man makes no real attempt to kill Shepard and either finishes himself off or makes it real easy for Shepard to kill him, but only AFTER Anderson is effectively out of the way.

^ Basically. Starchild's reasoning is plainly absurd, since the situation with the Geth indicates the Reapers themselves are the biggest cause of conflict between organics and synthetics. When you think of it that way he's launching this huge genocidal war as a bit of circular logic: "The New kid will always get beaten up by the bully, so I'm going to go and beat up the new kid so the bully won't have a chance to clobber him."

...we get the refuse/fuckyou ending and it's pretty clear that Starchild is just Harbinger trying to cut a deal with Shepard. This actually confirms my earlier theory about the nature of sacrifice/unification, in which case Harbinger HIMSELF is the one imposing this solution. In essence, the Cycle was always meant to be a temporary solution, not a solution to organics vs. synthetics, but a solution to Reapers vs. Everyone. Left to their own devices, the Reapers would just as soon pillage the entire galaxy and kill everything in it, but someone -- probably Harbinger -- redirected the Reapers to only focus on technologically advanced races while leaving the others alone.

When you consider that both the citadel and the mass relays were originally created by the reapers, and when you consider that the crucible is designed to use both of these as part of the solution, then you're forced to acknowledge the very strong possibility that the crucible is ALSO a reaper invention, probably created by Harbinger as a way to force an eventual end to the cycle. Harbinger couldn't build the Crucible himself, the other Reapers wouldn't have allowed it; he also can't USE the Crucible, since both the control pulse and the synthesis wave would probably fry his synthetic brain before he had a chance to finish the job. He needs someone who has not been indoctrinated and who otherwise wouldn't be destroyed by that radiation until it's had time to take effect -- an organic, in other words, and not just any organic would do, it would have to be someone with a ridiculously strong will and a unique enough understanding of the situation to make an informed choice. That also finally explains why shooting the power conduit triggers the (temporary, I'll bet) destruction of the Reapers: the Crucible was designed by Harbinger to primarily affect the Reapers, and blowing up that power conduit causes it to OVERLOAD them instead of control/pacify them. Harbinger seems to prefer the Synthesis solution; we already knew this about the Starchild, but now we can understand WHY: he doesn't want to destroy all organic life, but he doesn't want to destroy the Reapers either.

Circumstantial evidence for this one: when Harbinger descends to Earth to wipe out Hammer, he leaves Shepard alive with only a token force of troops to keep him away from the beam. Supposing that Harbinger knew what was going on in London -- and dropping out of orbit like that, he MUST have -- then it means he didn't go down there to keep Shepard from getting to the Citadel. He went down there to make sure the NOBODY ELSE did. And the Illusive Man, whether he knew it or not, was tasked with the sole job of making sure nobody but Shepard could make it to the Crucible to make that crucial choice. Thus the Illusive Man makes no real attempt to kill Shepard and either finishes himself off or makes it real easy for Shepard to kill him, but only AFTER Anderson is effectively out of the way.

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I guess the only thing that wouldn't make sense is how comically evil Harbinger is at the end of 2. Although I suppose that would at least explain the Collectors in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a crap ending but at least it made some sense this time....well, except for the whole synthesis thing. Even after starchild explained it, I still have no idea what it means and when I try to reason it out, it just makes my head hurt.

Oh and I didn't get my "little blue children" ending. Bugger....on the plus side, I did get the "breath" scene, so in my mind at least, if Shepard can breath, she can get back to Liara. If she can get back to Liara then little blue children are inevitable.

That took 3 months? That was 1.9GB? Don't get me wrong, it was an improvement, but I was expecting more considering the size of the thing. Firstly, why did we have to play from the Cerberus base mission when all the additions (that I noticed, at least) were from the conduit run on? It took me almost four hours to get to that point because it has been a while since I played and I didn't remember the controls.

This new version makes it even more clear to me that the star child is a crazy AI with a few important screws loose. The moment it mentioned killing its creators and turning them into Reapers, I realised that destroy was the way to go once again. That thing and its creations are the genocidal remnant of a short-sighted civilization that put their trust in a computer in order to end a war, and it paid back that trust by turning them into a thick organic mulch that fly around the galaxy in giant metal squids. You can't get much more crazy than that. The Catalyst needed to die, and though it sucks that the countless civilizations that the Reapers absorbed will be lost for eternity, it's time for the galaxy to send this abominable construct and its toys to the ash heap of history.

We'll keep its mass relays though, those things are pretty rad.

EDI apparently dies in the destroy ending now (she not at the "funeral"), which is sad, but it's what she would have wanted. I got the breath scene, which I don't understand. I thought you needed 3100 EMS to get that and I only had 2998. That's annoying, I wanted Shep to die. Oh well, in my mind that was his last breath and he's in Turian heaven, waiting at the bar...

Actually, I did get one final brief goodbye with Garrus as he boarded the Normandy, which was nice.

Just got done with it (synthesis as always), and I'll admit it, I cried, so... mission accomplished I guess, Bioware. Yeah, it's not perfect, but at least most of the glaring plot holes got fixed and I'm glad we got "slides" but I wish they would've gone into a little more detail about your choices like Dragon Age's ending (which I just finished replaying the other day.) Text would've been perfectly fine!

I just finished the new synthesis ending as well. While I didn't cry, I will admit that the last line of narration before the credits choked me up a bit.

When you discuss synthesis with the Catalyst, it says that it tried synthesis on it's own and it didn't work. I think it's fairly evident that it's referring to the creation of the reapers. Since then, it's kind of been doing a holding pattern until a new option comes available, made possible by Shepard joining with the beam. Very V'ger-esque. The thing that still irks me about that ending is that there was plenty of conflict between the organics that had nothing to do with synthetics, yet once everyone gets reformatted they all join hands and sing Kumbaya.